


Dragonfly

by Sholio



Category: Iron Fist (TV)
Genre: Animal Transformation, Dragons, Friendship, Gen, Mysterious and Fragrant Herbal Tea with Special Properties
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-17
Updated: 2020-04-17
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:42:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23707072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: "Wha --" Colleen began, and then Danny obviously recognized her and took off from Ward's wrist in a whir of wings, scoring a trail of tiny claw marks across the back of Ward's hand, and grabbed onto the front of Colleen's hoodie and started licking her face with his long, pointy tongue.Colleen flailed with a muffled shriek that Ward, who had already been the recipient of one of Danny's face-licking sessions, found very gratifying. He leaned on the door frame and waited until she managed to cope with the situation, holding Danny in both hands at arm's length."Ward," she said, and then, "What--" and then "Is this--" followed by, "Where.""The Bronx, surprisingly," Ward said. "Nothing terribly mystical has ever happened to us there. I guess it was only a matter of time."
Relationships: Ward Meachum & Colleen Wing, Ward Meachum & Danny Rand
Comments: 40
Kudos: 86
Collections: Flash In The Pan: A Food Flash Exchange





	Dragonfly

**Author's Note:**

  * For [scioscribe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/scioscribe/gifts).



> Thank you so much to Sheron for your cheerleading and helpful beta comments!

Ward knew this was going to end badly. He just _knew_ it.

They were in the back room of a head shop in the Bronx. The lady who ran the place was a hippie type, the sort of person with a long handmade skirt and a shimmering curtain of beads separating the back of the shop from the front. She also supposedly _knew things_ about the Iron Fist. She gave them tea that tasted faintly like grass clippings with overtones of pot, which Ward only made a faint pretense at sipping, on general principles. The air was full of the smell of incense, or at least what Ward hoped was incense, and the room was lit mainly with lava lamps. Danny had been actually drinking his tea, while the lady topped off his cup every time he took a sip.

Ward really needed to remember to show him _The Princess Bride_ and teach him a few things about poisoned drinks.

... and his mind was drifting. This was bad. A smoky haze hung in the air. Okay, he _knew_ that floating feeling, knew it all too well. There were drugs in that incense. They needed to get out of here.

"Danny --" he began, turning around, and there was no Danny.

For a minute, Ward was caught in a flat instant of choking shock and rage -- and then something darted across the table, fast-moving and glittering with iridescent flickers, a colorful glissando sliding down its length in the lava lamps' soft light. Ward jerked back, but it jumped onto his arm, at which point he could no longer deny that there was some kind of small lizard thing, about a foot long, with long gleaming wings, perched on his wrist.

"What the actual fuck," Ward said.

The tiny dragon curled its tail around his wrist and looked up at him with bright blue eyes. It was gold and green, no thicker than a piece of fat rope, maybe a foot long from its tailtip to the tip of its pointed snout -- sort of like a small winged snake with four legs that were now clinging to his sleeve with small sharp claws.

Ward would really, really have liked to believe it wasn't Danny, but there was no denying the Danny-ish expression on its face.

The hippie lady scrambled to her feet, upsetting her cup of grass clipping and hashish tea. "I ... I think you should leave," she said, staring at the tiny dragon on Ward's wrist.

"I think I want to know what's in that tea," Ward said, very calmly under the circumstances, he felt.

"It ... it opens your mind," the hippie lady said, her wide-eyed gaze fixed on Danny. "It ... uh ..."

"It turned my friend into a dragon, is what it did. We're going to be needing the antidote."

She just shook her head and fled from the room.

*

When Colleen opened the door of the dojo, Ward thrust his arm inside, with Danny clinging to it. Danny had spent the Uber ride curled up and napping along Ward's shoulders, his claws tickling the back of Ward's neck. As Ward climbed the stairs to the dojo, Danny woke up and scurried down his arm, vibrating with excitement.

"Wha --" Colleen began, and then Danny obviously recognized her and took off from Ward's wrist in a whir of wings, scoring a trail of tiny claw marks across the back of Ward's hand, and grabbed onto the front of Colleen's hoodie and started licking her face with his long, pointy tongue.

Colleen flailed with a muffled shriek that Ward, who had already been the recipient of one of Danny's face-licking sessions, found very gratifying. He leaned on the door frame and waited until she managed to cope with the situation, holding Danny in both hands at arm's length.

"Ward," she said, and then, "What--" and then "Is this--" followed by, "Where."

"The Bronx, surprisingly," Ward said. "Nothing terribly mystical has ever happened to us there. I guess it was only a matter of time."

Danny squirmed in Colleen's hands and twisted himself free. Fluttering his wings for balance, he ran up her arm, wriggled his way into her hood, and rested his small, triangular head against her cheek, all while Colleen wore a look of wide-eyed, panicked horror.

"Why is he so tiny?" Colleen asked, which -- Ward had to hand it to her -- was not the first, second, or even fifth question he would have expected someone to ask about their dragon-ified boyfriend.

"That's really your biggest concern right now?"

"No, but -- I --" Danny was in her hair now, crawling around and nibbling on it. Colleen flailed wildly at him, accidentally smacking Danny in the snout. Danny pulled his head back and looked hurt.

Ward, who'd had an extra hour or so to get used to this, pulled Danny out of her hair while Danny tried to hang on and Colleen made tiny yeeking noises as his claws caught in her hair. "Bad dragon," Ward told him. Danny squirmed around in his hands and tried to poke his head out between Ward's fingers. He was strangely warm to the touch; Ward would have expected him to be cool like the reptile he resembled, but instead he was gently warm, as if he had been lying in the sun.

Colleen stared warily at the dragon that was now trapped in Ward's hands, mouthing on Ward's thumb without actually breaking the skin, though Ward suspected from the sharp prick of Danny's teeth that it would be entirely possible for Danny to draw blood if he wanted to. "So," she said, and took a deep breath. "Are you _sure_ that's -- I mean, is it possible that it's a, uh, some kind of ... replacement?"

"You mean someone kidnapped Danny and replaced him with a tiny dragon right in front of me? It's possible, I guess," Ward said, trying not to imply with his tone how likely he felt this actually was (and from the look of Colleen's face, utterly failing). "But, look."

He turned over the little dragon, who thrashed wildly for a moment and then settled down, looking up at him with a blue-eyed trusting look. Danny's scales were green and gold for the most part, but there was a black mark on his chest that looked just like the brand on Danny's. It looked like it was seared into his scales, the high-gloss iridescence of the rest of his body discolored and weirdly dull in that one black patch.

It never really bothered Ward on the human version of Danny; it was just like a weird tattoo. But on the tiny dragon, it looked like a scar. 

"But," Colleen said. She fell silent and then held out her hands. Danny eagerly scrambled out of Ward's cupped hands and skittered up her arm to her shoulder. Ward resigned himself to a few more scratches (Danny literally did not seem to know how sharp his claws were) and tried not to laugh as Danny bonked his hard little snout affectionately on Colleen's nose and then tried to lick her face again.

*

"He's a Western dragon, not an Asian dragon," Colleen said. "Asian dragons don't have wings, and he doesn't have whiskers."

"And this is relevant to the current problem how?"

"I just thought it was interesting. Don't bite my head off, Ward."

"Sorry," Ward said.

They both looked down at Danny. They were sitting on the couch in the dojo, each at opposite ends. Colleen had made tea, but Ward had decided he'd had enough tea for a lifetime, thanks. Colleen hadn't really touched hers either. Instead Danny was busily lapping it with his tiny forepaws curled over the edge of the cup.

"What exactly did you say she said about the tea she gave him?" Colleen asked.

"I don't know. It was supposed to open up his mind somehow. Get him in touch with his inner nature."

"And his inner nature is a foot-long fire lizard?"

"I don't know! It's ..." He was about to say it wasn't the weirdest thing that had ever happened to them, but no, actually there was a distinct possibility that it kind of _was_.

Danny, meanwhile, had stopped lapping tea. He poked his nose at it, then blew out a tiny tongue of flame, like a match flame, that licked across the surface of the tea. Danny looked a little bit startled, and then poked his snout down into the tea and, presumably, did it again, because a puff of steam went up and then steam curled from the now-warm surface of the tea. Danny began lapping contentedly again. Ward and Colleen stared.

"So he breathes fire, I guess," Colleen said after a minute.

"I noticed that, yes."

*

A trip uptown to pay another visit to Head Shop Lady seemed to be called for. They stopped by the Rand parking garage and got Ward's car, which he almost never drove, but riding around town in cabs and Ubers with Danny's bright blue jewel eyes peeking out of Colleen's hood was probably not the best idea.

Colleen went in to talk to Head Shop Lady on her own. There was an ominous air of danger about her, and she was, Ward couldn't help noticing, wearing her katana. Ward got to sit outside and babysit Danny to keep him from following her in. This was easier said than done; Danny _really_ wanted to be where Colleen was, and Ward ended up with singed fingertips and a couple of dragon bites that Danny looked very sorry for. Eventually Ward managed to distract him with a raspberry ice cream cone.

"I wonder how much you're going to remember of this," Ward remarked, holding Danny and watching him demolish the ice cream cone with rapid flicks of his long black tongue.

Danny paused to quickly lick Ward's cheek and then went back to nomming an ice cream cone almost as big as he was.

"I'm going to assume that you won't remember _that_ , for example. Also --" A terrible thought had just occurred to him. "-- I really hope ice cream isn't poisonous to dragons."

"Is that a _dragon?"_ said a small voice near his knees as Ward tried to separate a softly growling Danny from his ice cream. Ward looked down. A kid was staring up at Danny with wide-eyed wonder.

"It's an iguana," Ward said.

"But it has wings."

"Aren't you supposed to be in school?"

"It's summer," the kid said in a tone that implied Ward was the dumbest adult imaginable. "Can I pet your dragon?"

"Iguana," Ward said, but Danny launched himself in a flurry of wings and flew to the kid's arm. The kid froze, staring with wide-eyed wonder. Danny poked his ice-cream-sticky nose in the kid's face.

"Is your dragon a boy or a girl?" the kid said in a wondering whisper.

"Boy. His name is Danny."

"That's a weird name for a dragon."

"Tell me about it," Ward said, and then there was a deep thump that shook the ground, like a distant, muffled explosion, and all the glass blew out of the head shop's windows along with about a million pieces of bongs. "Oops, gotta go, bye."

He shoved the ice cream cone into the kid's hand, grabbed Danny, and got back to the door just as Colleen marched out looking thunderous and sheathing her katana.

Danny launched himself out of Ward's hands and flew to Colleen, where he tangled himself rather stickily into her hair. "Aargh," Colleen said, trying to pull him out. Danny squirmed down to her shoulder and licked her nose with his raspberry tongue until she captured him firmly in her hands, kissed him on his snout, and put him firmly in the kangaroo pocket of her hoodie. "Car," she said to Ward. "Now."

"Why? Where are we going? Did you just Iron Fist somebody in there?"

"A warehouse in Queens." She pulled out her phone. "Hang on, I'm GPS'ing it for you."

"Yeah, but why?"

"She was paid to catch the Iron Fist," Colleen said flatly.

" _Again?"_ Ward said. They needed to have some kind of rota for Iron Fist kidnap attempts. "Was turning Danny into a tiny dragon part of the plan?"

"I don't think so, and she doesn't know how to turn him back." Colleen shoved Danny back down into her pocket, and waved the phone in front of Ward's face. "But someone here might, if we can get there before they clear out. Warehouse in Queens. Go."

*

Ward pulled into an alley down the street from the address Colleen had given him, reached over her knees and retrieved the gun he kept in the glove compartment.

"Don't shoot anyone before I can ask questions," Colleen said, loosening her katana in its sheath. Danny popped his head out of her pocket, eyes gemstone-bright.

"What about him?" Ward asked as Danny climbed onto the dashboard with a flutter of wings for balance.

"Any chance we can leave him in the car?"

They shared a look. "No," they said together.

"I'll keep him with me," Colleen decided. She scooped him off the dashboard and put him back in her pocket. Danny's head popped out again. "No. Stay there."

"What do I do while you're interrogating ninjas?"

Colleen looked up thoughtfully at the roofs of the buildings. "Actually ... it would be really helpful if you could go in the front and distract them."

"So I get to be bait, then?" Danny crawled out of Colleen's pocket and hissed. "Yeah, opinion noted. Fine, but if ninjas attack, I'm defending myself."

Danny scrambled up to Ward's shoulder. Ward, although feeling warmed by the display of solidarity, scooped him off and gave him back to Colleen. "No, you stay with her."

"Give me a minute and then go in," Colleen said, and slipped out into the alley. When Ward looked out a second later, she was gone.

This was the worst idea. They really should have called in backup. Misty, or one of Danny's super-powered friends or ... something.

He sighed, touched the gun in his jacket pocket, and got out of the car. An instant later, something exploded in his head and everything went dark.

*

Ward came back to himself with a splitting headache and a general sensation of movement. He roused enough to realize that he was upright, being held firmly from behind, and there was a sword at his throat.

Okay, lesson learned: when ninjas attack, sometimes you don't have time to draw your gun. This was probably why ninja movies rarely involve guns, Ward thought dazedly.

"Iron Fist!" his captor yelled. "Surrender yourself or the hostage dies!"

"Joke's on you, buddy," Ward muttered, trying to blink blood out of his eyes. "You picked the wrong hostage. She doesn't like me much." From the corner of his eye he could see at least a couple more people, moving dark blurs in the too-bright sunshine.

And then, out of the blue sky, a shrieking, infuriated, tiny dragon fell on them, spraying out little bursts of flame.

Danny might have been small, but having a flying, fire-breathing Chihuahua savaging your face was still going to put a crimp in your day. Ward stumbled away as his captor fell over, yelling and clawing at his face while Danny made noises like a boiling-over steam kettle, and then Colleen dropped from a roof onto one of the other guys.

Ward staggered into a wall and turned around. His vision was still doubled and his head hurt with migraine intensity, but with the wall at his back, he could stay on his feet. He fumbled in his pocket for the gun, and looked up just in time to see someone smack Danny's little dragon-body with the flat side of a sword, smashing him to the ground.

Ward's vision whited out for a second. He didn't remember launching himself at the guy, but then he was on top of him, punching him repeatedly in the face.

Something hit him hard in the side. He fell painfully and rolled over, glimpsing something gleaming and sharp flashing in his peripheral vision. There was a sharp metal scraping much too close to his ear, and Colleen stepped over him, having just deflected the blade that had nearly taken his head off.

He didn't think he'd been stabbed; he was pretty sure he'd been kicked. It was a dull pain in his side, not a sharp one -- the sort of steady throbbing that he was all too familiar with from Harold's tender loving care. He couldn't see Danny anywhere, but he did see someone lining up to stab Colleen in the back while she was dealing with the guy who'd almost beheaded Ward.

His hands were shaking and there was blood running into his eyes, but he steadied the gun on his knee and, in a moment of clarity when he was confident that Colleen was nowhere in the path of fire, squeezed the trigger. Backstabber stumbled and, while appearing to be not more than inconvenienced by the bullet, seemed to decide they were more trouble than they were worth. There was a sudden disorganized retreat of staggering, bleeding ninjas.

"Danny," Ward gasped out. He needed to find Danny, and now he wasn't sure where Colleen was either, but when he attempted to get up, the world spun and he lost his balance and fell backward, pavement smacking him in the head. That was ... not fun. And then Danny was suddenly scrabbling up his chest with sharp little dragon claws, and started licking his face.

"Ack! Blargh! Stop that," he muttered. He got both hands around Danny and felt down Danny's warm, scaly sides. "Are you okay?"

A shadow fell across him, blocking the too-bright sky, and Colleen crouched down beside him. Danny turned his attention to licking and nuzzling her hands. "Yes, I'm fine," she said, and ran a finger across his little horned head before placing a firm hand on the side of Ward's face. "I think you have a concussion."

"Thanks for the update," Ward managed. He was determined not to be sick in front of Colleen, but there was currently a very narrow margin for success. "Are they gone?"

"Yes. Hold still, Ward. I'm going to try to do something about that head injury."

Her hand rested against his temple, strangely gentle and warm. He looked up at her, and for a minute he thought it was just the sparks dancing in his vision that made it seem as if light was spiraling up her tattoo, then realized it was very real. Silver light danced across the concrete and brick walls lining the alley.

And then his view was blocked by Danny crawling across his face.

"Danny, no," Colleen said impatiently, starting to pick him up, and then she let go abruptly, sitting back on her heels. "Ward, look at Danny."

"I can't _see_ Danny," Ward said. Or more accurately, Danny was all he could see. But then he realized what she meant. Danny was glowing -- all of him, everywhere, wings and tail and all. 

Danny, glowing, nuzzled at the side of his head. Which also hurt, but there was warmth seeping in, as if sunlight was pouring over him, soft and gold. The pain and dizziness faded to a distant ache.

Danny gave a little sigh, his wings wilted and he dropped away, and then Colleen yelped, and Ward sat up -- much easier now than it had been; he wasn't dizzy at all -- to find that Colleen had a normal-sized, unconscious, very naked, and very human Danny in her lap.

*

"I can't believe I have the Iron Fist back," Danny said, delighted.

He'd slept for two days and then ate a half-dozen cheeseburgers, and now he was wrapped in blankets on the dojo couch, looking tired but very cheerful. Every once in a while he made a fist, as if he just wanted to know he still could.

" _I_ can't believe we traipsed all over the world trying to get you the Iron Fist back, and the answer turned out to be some random tea served in a head shop two miles from where we live," Ward said. "Although it seems on brand for us, now that I think about it."

"I really want to know what was in that tea," Danny said thoughtfully. "Do you think she's in contact with K'un-Lun?"

"No idea, no way to find out, don't care," Ward said. He and Colleen had taken a trip back to the shop while Danny was recovering, only to find the broken windows boarded up and a CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE sign on the door. The warehouse had also showed signs of being hastily cleared out.

"They'll probably try again," Colleen said, coming back from the kitchen with three cups carefully balanced in her hands. She set one down in front of Ward, and he braced himself for tea, only to find that it was actually hot cocoa. There were sprinkles on top.

"And _they_ are ..."

Colleen shrugged. She sat beside Danny and tucked her feet up, both hands curled around her cup of cocoa. "A Hand splinter sect is my best working guess. It's not as if there aren't plenty of options to choose from."

"And you've both got the Iron Fist now. One of you didn't lose it."

Colleen nodded. She flexed her fingers on the arm with the tattoo. "I can still feel it."

"I wonder what would happen if we Fisted together," Danny said rapturously, and reached for the cup of cocoa.

"Can you both just try to keep your sex lives out of this conversation," Ward said, and Colleen choked on her cocoa. "So, what happened, seriously? Turning you into a dragon fixed you ... how?"

"I think I just had to reconnect to the source of my wellspring," Danny said, with the serious face that Danny always had when he said completely bonkers stuff like that. "If she's right and the tea was about opening you up, getting in touch with your essence, then maybe I had to lose touch, for a little while, with the human part of me to find my way back to the dragon part of me."

That sounded vaguely ominous, so Ward dealt with it using his typical coping mechanism: sarcasm. "So ... like a reset? Like rebooting your computer? Turn you off, turn you back on, see if it fixes the problem."

"No, not at all like that," Danny said impatiently. Then he looked thoughtful. "Well, okay, maybe a little like that."

Ward caught Colleen's gaze. Her eyes crinkled above her cocoa cup in a not-quite smile.

Something had shifted between him and Colleen while they were trying to get Danny back to normal. Maybe it was just that you couldn't have someone's back in a fight and not warm up to them a little. There was a comfort between them that hadn't been there before. 

He could still feel warmth at the side of his head, where the bruise and gash had healed to a thin line above his temple, hidden by his hair.

"Anyway," Danny said, "I can't believe neither of you thought to take a picture of me when I was a dragon."

"We were a little bit distracted!" Ward protested.

"Next time I turn into a dragon, someone promise me you'll take a picture," Danny said, and Colleen's eyes crinkled again. "Promise?"

Ward heaved a deep sigh. His life. Seriously. "Promise," he said, and drank his cocoa.


End file.
